Late January’s box office snapped out of its slump this weekend as three newcomers lifted traffic and turned the top of the chart into a tight race. Studio estimates released Saturday showed Send Help and Iron Lung trading places depending on the model, while Melania surged far above early tracking and drew the weekend’s loudest conversation.
Send Help, directed by Sam Raimi and released by 20th Century Studios, opened in 3,475 theaters and leaned on a two-hander built around Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. The survival thriller posted an estimated $7.2 million Friday and tracked near an $18 million debut. Audience polling firm CinemaScore graded it B+, and Rotten Tomatoes scores landed in the 90s, a solid foundation for week-to-week hold.
Iron Lung reached multiplex scale through a fan-powered booking push led by its star-director Mark Fischbach. The sci-fi horror film expanded to 3,015 locations, topped Friday with about $8.9 million, and tracked to roughly $17.3 million for the weekend, numbers that put a self-distributed release in striking distance of a major studio opener. Reports ahead of release pointed to heavy presales and strong previews that helped set the pace.
The weekend’s political lightning rod, Melania from Amazon MGM Studios, followed a different curve. The Brett Ratner-directed profile of Melania Trump played 1,778 theaters, earned about $2.9 million Friday, and tracked to an $8.1 million opening after earlier projections clustered closer to $3 million to $5 million. Opening-night demos skewed heavily toward women over 55, and CinemaScore polling stamped it with an A. The start also positioned the film for the strongest opening for a non-concert documentary in roughly a decade, edging past After Death.
Forecasting for the weekend ran unusually volatile, with at least one tracking analyst describing thin, inconsistent data around the documentary’s demand in key markets. That uncertainty now shifts to Sunday actuals, which will determine the final winner at No. 1 and test how much of this surge holds after opening weekend.
